Introduction
Building a professional website from scratch can be an arduous and expensive undertaking for resource-strapped startups and small businesses. Between hiring developers, picking platforms, designing pages, writing content, and going live, it's easy to get overwhelmed. 😰
Many founders simply lack the coding skills or design experience to build functional and attractive websites themselves. Outsourcing development help is costly and time-consuming. Even seemingly simple tasks like integrating forms, payments, or analytics can eat up precious startup budget. 💸
That's why having access to an intuitive, drag-and-drop website builder designed specifically for startups can be a total game changer. With the right free website builder, you can create an entire professional website in just a few hours without any coding required. 🎉
In this post, we'll explore how startups can quickly and easily build custom websites using Unicorn Platform's free website builder. You'll learn:
- How to browse Unicorn's extensive template library to find the perfect starting design
- Tips for easily customizing pages with your own text, images, videos
- How to tweak the design using your brand colors, fonts and logo
- Steps for launching a polished, mobile-friendly website
In less than an hour, you can go from idea to live website using this intuitive, drag and drop builder. Let's dive in!
Choosing the Right Website Template
Instead of starting from a blank page, website templates provide pre-designed page layouts, styled components and structured content sections. This makes building your site infinitely easier! 🙌
With over 100+ free, professionally designed templates for startups, ecommerce, blogs, portfolios and more, Unicorn Platform offers plenty of options to kickstart your website build.
Here are some tips for picking the ideal template:
- Preview different templates to get inspired about layouts and styles
- Use Unicorn's filters to find templates for your specific industry, business type or layout
- Ensure the template has key pages like About, Services, Contact, Blog, etc.
- Focus less on finding the 100% perfect template now - designs can be customized
- Consider mixing and matching templates for consistency across core pages
Types of Website Templates
Narrow your template search by identifying the right category for your business goals:
- Corporate - Clean, modern designs perfect for any startup or SaaS
- Creative - Portfolio sites with artsy designs to showcase work
- Ecommerce - Built-in shopping carts and secure checkout pages
- Blog - Layouts with recent posts, categories, author profiles
- Landing Pages - High-converting templates for campaigns and offers
For example, a bootstrapped startup may opt for the free "Venture" startup template for its polished corporate design. An agency can use the "Brooklyn" creative portfolio template to display case studies. And a Dropshipping store would choose an ecommerce template like "Shopmax" to power their online store.
With the template category and business goal decided, now let's ensure you have all the necessary pages.
Choosing the Right Pages
Every successful website needs a core set of pages like:
- About - Share your brand story and team bios
- Services - Explain your offerings in detail
- Contact - Make it easy for visitors to get in touch
- Blog - Share insights regularly to boost SEO
Building a simple sitemap helps outline the pages you need. Unicorn's pre-built templates often include all the essentials - you just customize them!
For example, a SaaS startup would likely need Pages for Products, Pricing, Customer Support, Log In, Free Trial Signup, Case Studies, Integrations, API Docs, etc. A little planning goes a long way.
With the template style and necessary pages decided, now we can dive into customizing the content.
Adding Your Content
Next, it's time to make the template distinctly yours by populating it with your unique content. Compelling website copy helps engage and convert visitors into customers.
Tips for Adding Content
Before pasting in copy, have your core content mapped out for each page. Here are some best practices for seamlessly adding content with Unicorn's intuitive editor:
- Draft succinct headlines, subheads and paragraphs for all pages
- Upload relevant high-quality images and videos to reinforce your message
- Embed calls-to-action like contact forms, pricing tables, signup flows
- Integrate social media feeds to showcase community engagement
With the right mix of text and visuals tailored to your brand voice, your startup website content will resonate with your audience.
Crafting the Text Content
Every page requires strategic text content:
- Page titles and meta descriptions optimized for SEO
- Headlines and subheads for quick skimming
- Short paragraphs and lists for better readability
- Strong calls-to-action to convert visitors
- Tight, focused copy edited for clarity
For example, an ecommerce site should use compelling product descriptions, calls-to-action to add items to the cart, trust-building policies, and clear checkout instructions.
Adding Visual Content
Engaging images, video, data visualizations and more help your content stand out:
- Use high-quality photos from free image banks like Pexels
- Always add alt text descriptions for accessibility
- Embed videos from YouTube or Vimeo
- Use charts or graphs to visualize data clearly
- Optimize images for web with Unicorn's built-in editor
For example, an agency website could showcase case studies using data-rich infographics, customer testimonial videos, and project image galleries.
With a strategic mix of text and visual content personalized to your brand, your startup website will connect with and convert your audience.
Customizing the Design
Next, we'll explore how to customize the template with your brand identity by tweaking:
- Color schemes
- Typography choices
- Logo presence
- Layouts and styles
This makes the site feel uniquely yours. Maintaining brand consistency across all pages is key.
It's also crucial to test responsiveness across devices to catch any issues before launch.
Inject Your Brand Identity
Visually reinforce branding through:
- Adding logos in the header/footer sections
- Using brand fonts, colors, and graphical elements
- Styling elements like buttons and CTAs on-brand
- Uploading any brand assets like logos in needed sizes/formats
For example, Shopify carefully maintains their clean, minimalist brand style across their entire website.
Responsiveness Testing
Viewing your site across devices ensures it works for all visitors:
- Test all screen sizes - mobile, tablet, desktop
- Fix issues like tiny text, overlapping elements
- Confirm images and videos resize/stack properly
Unicorn Platform natively builds responsive mobile-friendly websites. But always test thoroughly before launch.
With colors, fonts, logos and content in place, your custom website design is complete!
Launching and Promoting Your Website
Before launching your live website, complete these final checklist items:
- Enable HTTPS security with SSL certificate
- Connect domain and set up redirects
- Activate built-in SEO like sitemaps and metadata
- Compress images and optimize performance
Promoting your new website is also critical to driving initial traffic and conversions.
Performance Optimizations
Speed up your site and improve user experience through:
- Minifying HTML, CSS and JS
- Compressing images
- Enabling CDN and caching for faster load times
- Lazy loading below-the-fold images
Unicorn Platform handles many optimizations automatically including minified code and global CDN.
Get the Word Out
Promote your new website through:
- Email lists and social campaigns
- SEO by creating useful content
- Monitoring traffic sources and doubling down on what works
- Adding email opt-ins, social sharing buttons, chat widgets
With Unicorn's built-in analytics, marketing integrations and SEO best practices, you'll be ready to start driving conversions and growth for your startup's new website.
Conclusion
As a resource-constrained startup, investing the time and money to hire web developers and design agencies to build your website from scratch simply isn't feasible.
That's where using an intuitive, drag-and-drop website builder like Unicorn Platform pays off in spades. As we covered in this post, Unicorn's free website builder makes it fast and easy for startups to:
- Choose from professionally designed templates
- Easily customize pages by adding your own branded content
- Tweak the design using your colors, fonts and logo
- Launch a polished, mobile-friendly website in just hours
By relying on Unicorn's AI-powered building and design tools, startups can launch fully functional websites faster, easier and more affordably than ever.
So don't wait to get your startup's website up and running - try Unicorn Platform's free website builder today to launch your site in record time! Let us know if you have any other questions - we're happy to help fellow founders succeed.
